Memberships and subscriptions usually do not cost much, but their dates are easy to miss. A gym membership runs out while you are on holiday, a free trial quietly turns into a paid subscription, and a yearly renewal charges you for a service you stopped using long ago.
Every gym and service has its own terms, so check the exact dates in your contract, in the service’s terms or in your account settings. This guide explains the general principles.
A membership usually lasts a month, six months or a year. The end date is in your contract or in the gym’s app. Things to know in advance:
Many services let you try the paid version for free for a week, two weeks or a month, but they ask for your card details. When the trial ends, the subscription becomes paid and you are charged automatically, unless you have cancelled it.
Cancel a day or two before the end, not at the last moment: the charge may come earlier than you expect, for example because of the service’s time zone.
Write down the end date as soon as you start a trial: a month later, it is easy to forget.
Yearly subscriptions, such as services, software, cloud storage and domain names, renew once a year, so they are the easiest to forget. A service often sends an email before it renews, but such emails are easily lost among others.
The price at renewal can be different from the first one, for example when a first-year discount ends. If you no longer need the subscription, turn off automatic renewal in advance. If you do need it, check that the renewal has gone through.
Do not miss the renewal of a domain name. If it expires, the website and email on it stop working, and after a while someone else can register it.
Subscriptions renew from the card you gave. When the card expires or you replace it, the payment fails: the service may stop your subscription, and a domain name may expire. Your bank usually sends a new card in advance, but you often have to add its details to each service yourself.
A card shows the month and year it expires: it is valid until the last day of that month.
Create a timer with the end date and turn on an email reminder.